Maple Cream Cookies

Maple Cream Cookies

Maple Cream Cookies

For the cookie:

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup real maple syrup
1 teaspoon maple extract
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 cups all-purpose flour
Directions:
1.       Preheat oven to 350°. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease them.
2.       Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
3.       Cream the butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer. Add in the egg, syrup, and maple extract and mix until well blended. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet carefully to avoid wearing your flour. Beat until just combined.*
4.       Shape into 1 inch balls (about 1 tablespoon each) and place on cookie sheet. Try to make the balls the same size so they will match up well for sandwiching. Flatten slightly with the palm of your hand or the bottom of a drinking glass.
5.       Bake 8-10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking. Let cool completely before frosting.
*At this point, if you’re lucky enough to have a maple leaf cookie cutter and wish to use it, refrigerate your dough until firm enough to roll (probably about 1-2 hours). Use flour to help you roll out the dough and cut out your cookies. If your cookie cutter is not symmetrical, be sure to flip it over to cut half the cookies or flip the cut-out over on the baking sheet (so the cookies will match up when sandwiching them).


For the icing:

Ingredients:

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick), at room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
4 tablespoons maple syrup
¼ teaspoon maple extract
1 tablespoon whipping cream
Directions:
1.       Cream the butter with an electric mixer. Slowly add in the powdered sugar until combined.  Mix in the maple syrup and maple extract. Add the cream and beat until combined and smooth.
2.       Turn half of the cooled cookies upside down. Frost the bottom half of the all the cookies and then sandwich them with the top of the cookie. When I started out I was not using a lot of frosting and then went back and filled them more when I realized how much I had left. You will use about a teaspoon per cookie.
Yield: about 40 sandwich cookies or 80 stand-alone cookies